Seedy flapjacks and the art of patience

I was starting to worry that I'd lost my knack with flapjacks...

But it turns out that I really haven't. You just shouldn't eat them as soon as they're out of the oven, because they need time to set. I ate three in this warm, crumbly state, fretting continuously about how I'd accidently made granola, about what went wrong, that perhaps I hadn't used enough butter... Actually, the only thing that was missing was a little bit of patience

I feel like life's been asking that of me a lot recently. It's a lesson I appear to be quite resistant to. I have moments where I completely get it - why rush towards the future, towards the end of your life... stay in the present moment, relax. Everything comes at the right time. And then I feel like I've been patient for long enough, and where's my reward for being so patient... and completely miss the whole point again. But as a friend said to me recently, "good things are worth the wait". He was right, about these flapjacks at least

Ingredients

200g butter

3-4 cups oats

1 cup maple syrup

1/2 cup linseeds

1/2 sunflower seeds

1/2 pumpkin seeds

Handful chopped dates

Tiny bit of butter

You melt the butter in a pan and add all the seeds. Fry these for a few minutes before adding the maple syrup, dates and oats. Keep mixing in the oats until you are happy with the ratio. Spread on a buttered baking tray and stick in a pre-heated oven at about 180 degrees C for about 20minutes. Score, then allow to cool before munching

Little hoofs aka Polish gnocchi

I've had a lot of trouble with my hoofs. I'm talking about those little potato dumplings down there. Sometimes the simplest things can be the hardest, because, as we all know from Julie and Julia, simple does not mean easy. And yet I firmly believe that simple is best, in cooking as in life. When you're young and naive life appears to be complicated, but as you get older and wiser you realize that complicated situations are actually incredibly tedious. You just need to be stronger, braver, more honest with yourself that's all. Simple, but not easy

To be fair, the first time I made these I didn't have any plain flour. I had only chickpea flour and self raising, and after the last time I made dumplings with self raising flour, I knew not to use that. They ended up looking like bloated little haggis and tasted like... carpet (don't ask me how I know what carpet tastes like). So I used the chickpea flour. And that was really weird too, although it did make them a pretty colour at least. The moral of this story is to use plain flour

And don't stray too much from the measurements I give you, although I myself use them only as a guide and don't own a set of scales. And don't cook them for too long either, like I did with my first batch. You need to stand over them and watch out for precisely the moment they swim to the top, otherwise you'll have a sticky mess on your hands. Other than that, you'll be fine

Cook the potatoes until they fall apart when you poke them and mash with a bit of salt until they are perfectly smooth. Allow to cool on a surface covered in (plain) flour. At this point, start frying the shallots in the olive oil, season. Add an egg and a cup of flour to the potatoes (see below for more precise measurements). Quickly kneed it all together and roll into three snake-like shapes, just like that up there. Cut these diagonally into little hoofs and throw into a large pan of boiling, salted water. As soon as they swim to the top, remove them from the water and drain. You'll need to cook these in three batches most probably, too many in one go and there'll be yet another kind of sticky mess. Throw the drained hoofs in with the shallots and fry for a brief moment before serving

Ingredients (serves 2)

3 large potatoes

1 egg

200g of plain flour

Sea salt

Handful shallots, peeled and sliced

3-4 tblsp olive oil, or more - don't be shy

Cauliflower and brussels sprouts the Polish way

I've been thinking a lot about vegetables recently. I miss the summer ones so much, but i don't want to eat them if they're flown in from Peru. Nothing tastes that great after such a long journey. And for some reason winter vegetables have stopped floating my boat in recent times. We're having a bit of a crisis, I guess. Perhaps it's because in my mind they've remained in their old role as a healthy but rather limp and uninteresting addition to the Sunday roast... Yet I know that it doesn't have to be this way, so I took some seasonal vegetables and dressed them up a bit. I did the Polish thing that I love with lots of butter, salt and breadcrumbs (the equivalent of buying some sexy underwear)

If you fancy doing something like this with your vegetables, then take a couple of tablespoons of butter, a lot of olive oil and heat them up on a frying pan. Fry the breadcrumbs until they turn golden, then add some salt. Meanwhile, cook the vegetables for about 8-10min in salty water with a bit of lemon squeezed in, draining them before they loose their crunchiness. Pour the breadcrumb sauce over the vegetables. This method is normally reserved for cauliflower in Poland, but the bitterness of the brussels sprouts complimented the sweetness of the cauliflower beautifully, so it was a successful combo. And we should all eat more brussels sprouts. Fact

Fusilli with baby vegetables

The thing about me and pasta is that it's my go-to food when I don't have time or can't be bothered. Theo Randall's book (Pasta) has got me thinking about it in a different way. With more care perhaps. I had fusilli in the cupboard and he suggests fusilli with cuttlefish (sadly, this seems to be the only fusilli recipe), as they curl around the pasta so nicely. It reminded me of the time my friend's boyfriend cooked for us in Treviso, using massive pasta shells to complement tiny little sea creatures perfectly - the little things all got stuck in the shells, so that each mouthful was full of sea flavour and there was no need to chase anything around the plate. That's the Italian way of choosing pasta - the shape depends entirely on the sauce. However, as today I have an early spring clean on my hands, thanks to the lovely Coco and some critters she's picked up, I really didn't have time to go on a mission to find cuttlefish. A few years ago, I would definitely have done that and got incredibly stressed out in the process, but now I am older and wiser, without the inclination to complicate my life

So I decided that I was going to use stuff that I already had in, and that shallots were going to have to do the job of the cuttlefish in Theo's recipe - of curling round the fusilli, I mean. It turned out to be something worth writing about, so here we are. I fried some shallots in olive oil, added some baby mushrooms chopped in half and finely sliced baby aubergines, and continued to fry throughout the whole time that the fusilli was cooking - so about 20min - stirring occasionally. Half way through, I seasoned with sea salt and some pepper. Then, I added a splash of this amazing balsamic vinegar. I had to, I add it to everything now. I'm sure you've heard this before but if you like your food, then it's really worth spending at least a tenner on good quality balsamic. That was followed by some tomato passata, and a handful of thyme. Allow to simmer for 5min. Finally, add the drained fusilli and stir everything together really well, no rushing. Finally, finish off with parmesan shavings, black pepper and more fresh thyme. Here are the ingredients

Fusilli

Olive oil

Shallots

Baby closed cup mushrooms

Baby aubergines

Passata

Good quality balsamic

Fresh Thyme

Parmesan

Salt and pepper